How to fix my Document

[Kuroneko97]

I often make notes on my computer on stories I've made up, but soon after finishing up the notes on one labeled "MMM Notes" I opened it the next day to find the information, in a way, gone.

It's not that the document is now blank, but I only see squares now. And trying to copy and paste it doesn't post more squares, just a space. According to my sister, the information is "embedded," So I needed to find how to change it back.

So I ask my fellow escapists, do you know how I can fix my document? I'm going to make a duplicate, in case I screw up trying to fix it, but does anyone know how to fix an embedded document?

EDIT: Here's a picture of it:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=14bu5jl&s=7

 

[Hairetos]

could you take a picture of it with print screen? I think you're opening it in the wrong encoding, but show us a pic so we can accurately handle the problem.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Question: Do the squares look like this:

 

Or, as Hairetos said, can we have a screenshot?

 

[Kuroneko97]

I often make notes on my computer on stories I've made up, but soon after finishing up the notes on one labeled "MMM Notes" I opened it the next day to find the information, in a way, gone.

It's not that the document is now blank, but I only see squares now. And trying to copy and paste it doesn't post more squares, just a space. According to my sister, the information is "embedded," So I needed to find how to change it back.

So I ask my fellow escapists, do you know how I can fix my document? I'm going to make a duplicate, in case I screw up trying to fix it, but does anyone know how to fix an embedded document?

Try opening it in WordPad. WordPad has a few more text formatting options then say, NotePad. Usually I see some Microsoft chat logs and the like in squares and weird characters too, but once I open them in WordPad, they come out just fine.

Hope this helps!

The problem is, I use WordPad. That's where I do all my notemaking.

 

[Mr Montmorency]

Open it in Notepad.

 

[Kuroneko97]

could you take a picture of it with print screen? I think you're opening it in the wrong encoding, but show us a pic so we can accurately handle the problem.

I don't know how to take a picture. I only really use computers for the average nerd stuff. Can you tell me how to take a picture of the document?

 

[Hairetos]

could you take a picture of it with print screen? I think you're opening it in the wrong encoding, but show us a pic so we can accurately handle the problem.

I don't know how to take a picture. I only really use computers for the average nerd stuff. Can you tell me how to take a picture of the document?

could you take a picture of it with print screen? I think you're opening it in the wrong encoding, but show us a pic so we can accurately handle the problem.

I don't know how to take a picture. I only really use computers for the average nerd stuff. Can you tell me how to take a picture of the document?

1. hide anything on your computer screen you don't want us to see
2. hit the prt scrn button on your keyboard. It's right by scroll lock on mine.
3. Go to paint and hit control+v
4. Save the file
5. Upload the pic to tinypic.com
6. Post the URL using IMG tags

 

[Patrick Dare]

Sounds like it's using some formatting that either you don't have installed or your word processor can't handle. As someone said you can try opening it in notepad.

I'd try opening it in MS word but if you don't have that try openoffice. It's basically a free version of MS office and has pretty good compatability. Here's a link: http://www.openoffice.org/

 

[Freechoice]

Files in notepad are formatted as .txt's
Encoding is ANSI, Unicode, Unicode big endian and UTF-8.

I have no idea what any of that means, but someone might.


MMM? Marines, Marauders and Medivacs? Good strat, but you'll lose to storms and fungal growth.


In all seriousness, use google docs for your writing. It's all nice and safe on the interwebs, is free and the universe really has to hate you for you to lose anything.

 

[Kuroneko97]

could you take a picture of it with print screen? I think you're opening it in the wrong encoding, but show us a pic so we can accurately handle the problem.

I don't know how to take a picture. I only really use computers for the average nerd stuff. Can you tell me how to take a picture of the document?

could you take a picture of it with print screen? I think you're opening it in the wrong encoding, but show us a pic so we can accurately handle the problem.

I don't know how to take a picture. I only really use computers for the average nerd stuff. Can you tell me how to take a picture of the document?

1. hide anything on your computer screen you don't want us to see
2. hit the prt scrn button on your keyboard. It's right by scroll lock on mine.
3. Go to paint and hit control+v
4. Save the file
5. Upload the pic to tinypic.com
6. Post the URL using IMG tags

Got it. Will edit first post.

 

[tharglet]

It looks like either the encoding went wrong (i.e. for some reason WordPad decided to open it "wrong" - certain text strings at the start of files used to do this to Windows Notepad), or the file has become corrupt. Embedding is having a file-in-a-file, and it is unlikely to be that.

You could try opening it in one of the programs suggested above - if it's an encoding problem, stuff like OpenOffice are more likely to detect the correct encoding.
If that doesn't bring any joy, you could upload the file for people to investigate, but it depends how sensitive the contents are to if you're willing to do that.